This movie short by MGM from 1932 shows Buenos Aires during its glory years. Well, glorious for the rich men who lived there, a little less so for the natives, the cows and the women who also inhabited “The Argentine” at the time.

Check out the great shots of Plaza deMayo at 2:49, and BA’s famous Calle Florida at 3:02, which back then allowed not only cars (today it’s pedestrian-only) but also horses (expect to see leather goods and street performers today).

Apparently, in the early part of the century, you could also expect fresh milk while you strolled around the city, and by “fresh” I mean milked from a cow standing on the sidewalk.

As was noted while visiting the Palermo race track, it was against the law for men to appear in public without a coat, which meant many men (apparently when they were betting on the fillies) would don pajama coats as a way to skirt the law (you could be fined 5 pesos otherwise).

It should also be noted that as the narrator points out, modern times hadn’t yet corrupted the romance of “Old Spain” in Buenos Aires at the time. In fact, the romance still existed as evidenced by the women of the Argentine, who were apparently seldom “troubled about the rights of their sex or any of the more virile notions that [had] stirred modern womenhood.” Not to worry, they were apparently content with “the admiration so lavishly bestowed upon them” by the men around them. Sheesh, sounds like the life of a city cow wouldn’t have been a bad alternative.